The Conservatives are pledging to admit 10,000 more Syrians if re-elected.
What the Prime Minister failed to address was the traumatic fear faced by hundreds of Syrian nationals already in Canada whose refugee claims have been denied and are facing deportation to the very country from which Alan Kurdi’s family, and millions of others, have tried so desperately to flee.
According to the latest statistics, almost 800 Syrian nationals were issued departure orders from Canada in 2012 and 2013, even though as of March 12, 2012, the Canadian Border Services Agency has instituted what it calls “administrative deferral of removals” (ADR) for Syrians due to the chaos in that country.
Under ADR, deportation is stayed – not cancelled – pending changes in Syria, where the Assad regime’s war against the population remains the single greatest cause of a refugee flow that has topped 4 million people, with 7.6 million internally displaced.
Remarkably, Syria has yet to be placed on a list of moratorium countries to which no deportations can take place. Those facing ADR live in anxious limbo, never knowing if the next knock on the door could be border agents insisting that the time to leave Canada has arrived.
With lives on hold compounded by the possibility of forcible return to a country devastated by war, members of the expatriate Syrian community in Canada are wondering why the Harper government doesn't extend to the hundreds already here the same resettlement promises (paltry as they are) it has now pledged on the campaign trail to overseas refugees.
Among those Syrians under deportation order is Ottawa’s Dima Siam, a mother of three Canadian children who grows thinner by the day with worry that she may be forcibly torn from her family. Her husband, systems engineer Mohammad Al Rayyan, is exasperated that a simple misunderstanding led to the refusal of an application to sponsor his wife, who grew up in United Arab Emirates and was living in a Syrian refugee camp before she came to Canada on a visitor's visa in 2012.
A Canadian citizen for 13 years, Al Rayyan says that his family was living in Syria in 2012 when it was clear the country was dissolving into civil war. They were contacted on half a dozen occasions by Canadian foreign affairs officials, who encouraged them to leave the deteriorating country. Al Rayyan says overseas Canadians treated his family well and assisted them with the necessary paperwork, but once in Ottawa, that spirit of generosity disappeared.
For less than 3 months, as they got their footing in Canada, the family was on social assistance, a fact that was held against them in the rejection of Al Rayyan’s sponsorship application. That application was submitted in January 2013; had it been submitted a month later, after Al Rayyan received a job offer and left social assistance, the outcome would have been far different.
Even though Al Rayyan has paid back the assistance they received, Dima Siam is now under a deportation order, stateless and unable to travel. She is ineligible to attend subsidized ESL classes, nor does she have access to most health care services.
“Most times we don't sleep,” Al Rayyan says.“We are always thinking, ‘What's going to happen, what should we do?’
"We get calls from the school. My oldest son, who was in grade 1 last semester, is telling his teacher, ‘I am so scared, I don't want to go to Syria.’ His teacher is saying he keeps looking around, he is afraid someone is going to shoot him. He imagines bad things, because he saw a lot of people going to their graves when he was four in Syria. Even in the house, he doesn’t dare to go to another room unless his mother or I am with him. We cannot focus. I cut back my hours at work."
Al Rayyan adds: "We keep hearing in the news Canada cares about refugees, they are saying they will bring people to Canada, but this is mental abuse to my wife, because she has been told she has to leave. What is she supposed to think? She is a university graduate. She could be a teacher by now, but she cannot go to school and she cannot speak English. She is in prison here.”
Another Ottawa family is experiencing similar stress. For 57-year-old Ahmed Alhaj, a minor technical dispute in emigrating to Canada has placed him under deportation order. Like many Syrians, he grew up outside the country in Saudi Arabia, but was unable to renew a passport because he had not performed military service in Syria, an affront that would deem him an enemy of the Assad regime. In an effort to get to Canada, he obtained a travel document by purchasing land and obtaining citizenship for himself and his son Abdullah in the Dominican Republic. (Canada has a similar program offering permanent residency within two years to investors willing to pump $2 million into the Canadian economy.)
The Alhaj family received permanent residency in June 2004, but in 2008, Canadian officials suddenly claimed that Ahmed and Abdullah's passports were false, even though all the identity information listed on them was truthful, and both were stripped of their status and deemed inadmissible to Canada for alleged “misrepresentation.”
While Ahmed Alhaj tried to get to the bottom of the misunderstanding regarding the Dominican passports, his family has undergone a seven-year legal battle to try and win back the their status. Only recently, the Canadian government dropped its case against Abdullah, but maintains that Ahmed must leave, even though the same set of facts applies equally to both.
In Abdullah's case, immigration officials argued it was all right for him to stay because his wife is from Quebec and it would be difficult for her to visit Abdullah if he were deported to Syria. But in Ahmed's case the Canadian government maintains that since his wife is Syrian, no such difficulties would attend his removal from Canada, even while he plays a key role in the care of his grandchildren.
As his lawyer points out in documents filed with the Federal Court of Canada, “any person removed to Syria may be at risk of aerial bombardment, attack, extrajudicial killing, chemical weapons attack, incendiary bomb attacks, disappearance or indiscriminate detention.”
Abdullah is frustrated, noting: “My Mom and Dad are depressed and down all the time, and my mom gets horrible pains and headaches from all this stress. We don’t want the government to put a hold on things so that we are 10 or 20 years established in Canada and then they tell my Dad, ‘Goodbye now.’ They need to put the deportation order aside and let him apply for citizenship. This does not make any sense, they are destroying people’s lives.”
Seeing the images of desperate refugees in Europe only adds to the stress of Syrians under deportation order. Abdullah Alhaj says he supports the pledges from all three federal party leaders to bring more Syrians to Canada, “but let’s start with the ones who are already here.”
Original Article
Source: NOW
Author: MATTHEW BEHRENS
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